I watched a First Descendant and a Once Human video back to back and for the first ten minutes during the transition, my brain could not tell me that it was a different game. Which is which?
They are pretty different; I don't really want to get into the quality of the design. These games where you shut your brain off and just complete meters can have their use. I do, however, think that there's this weird homogenization happening, like when Unreal Engine 3 only produced brownish chest-high shooters for like 4-5 years. Someone found a formula and it's a pretty bad formula, derived from those alien-looking, Korean beauty filters. And yet everyone is now using that mould to make different shades of the same thing. Do a lot of people even think that this blank slate looks good? Clean Faces mods looked like this ten years ago already, but I guess someone must be providing positive feedback for these featureless waifus to be mass produced.
I just can't imagine that the gaming industry is currently healthy enough for these kinds of secondary projects to live, let alone thrive. Online games like Defiance had it hard enough, back in the day when you could launch anything. You could even launch Firefall, bus and all. Today though; when you can make the award-winning Hi-Fi Rush and still get shut down? Where you can make the award-winning Rollerdrome and still get shut down? Those are stylistically captivating games that stand out on their own, but scratch that. Where live service games get announced and sunset in the same breath? The tech graveyard is littered with a miasma of now inaccessible releases, like Babylon's Fall. Amazon's own, Crucible. Name your pick.
It's like the gaming industry watched Anthem crash and burn and decided that, maybe, they just didn't try hard enough. We'll be the ones who get it right! And then we get Immortals of Aveum-likes for years on end; games made from a dozen different angles that people played and all said in unison: "Yeah, it's okay." That's the level of enthusiasm that these joints elicit. Did you play Outriders? Yeah, I messed around with it for a bit. Rogue Company? I guess you could join the 400 people still playing it, while you can. Will you, though?
And now the Genshins of this world are coming for your whole bag as well. They made like seven of those already. They just keep pumping them out! Now what?
There are a lot of question marks in this text, but that's basically what I'm getting at. I'm perplexed. What is this similar looking junk trying to achieve; not just for the games, but the studios making them? Some of these projects are from houses with huge backing, like Nexon. Are they really that delusional that they think they're gonna be the one to burst through the crowd? Do they just not care about the work at all? Just more question marks. Again, once the servers shut down, they're never coming back. That can't be worth whatever pennies you recoup by sharking every monetization method you can into your formulaic release. Even worse: At best, the people who worked years on one of these just see that labor get dusted. Years of their life, gone. At worst, well, we've seen that happening in real time, this last year. At least the singleplayer examples I named exist in the stasis where they wait for some obscure license to expire. Then, inexplicably, that game will also get delisted forever. Games don't even ship in a complete state on a disc anymore either, so you're not preserving anything that way. Maybe you'll have a version before the day one patch, which fixes a ton of issues not addressed during crunch. Maybe your disc is an installer and nothing else.
What's the end game? That's a Marvel's Avengers reference, which was delisted last year. I'm sure they'll hit it big this time with Marvel Rivals. I can keep naming walking corpses in perpetuity. Then I think about the endless void of time that was lost in making a product that you can't even buy anymore and I get sad. It's not even like manufacturing needs have moved on, so we just can't press any more copies. The digital space is nigh infinite. You could hold a billion of these and never run out of room. You'd just run out of profit. That probably answers my question. It's not an "economically viable" option, whatever something as nebulous as that means. I was recently reminded of the whole Phil Fish drama, where he disappeared because some schmuck was complaining that developers aren't candid with media. I never understood why you'd accuse the literal most candid - too candid - developer of that. Still, in recent times, it would be nice if we could get an answer that isn't just a bunch of corporate speak. We didn't want to keep servers up, because they cost like thirty grand a year and our executive suite wanted that money to buy a nice shirt. Your game is dead now; you understand.
I hope you play your niche-but-not-niche games on time. I miss Radical Heights so much.
